From SAVIOUS KWINIKA in Orlando, FloridaFLORIDA, (CAJ News) – SAP, the global software corporation, has announced a US$50 billion investment to drive innovation, as well the expansion of a partnership with Microsoft.

These have been the highlights of the ongoing SAP global conference, the SAP Sapphire Now customer conference which has resumed in Orlando, Florida in the United Sates.

The partnership with Microsoft, hailed as the biggest in the world by leading technology giants, is aimed at delivering broad support for SAP’s flagship cloud solution, HANA.

It will be deployed on Microsoft’s Azure, with the sole purpose to simplify work through new integrations.

SAP Global Chief Executive Officer, Bill McDermott, emphasised his company’s stamina was in strengthening partnerships and collaborations in order to run business better.

“While the world’s biggest problems are world’s biggest opportunities, innovation and partnerships are key at SAP,” said McDermott.

“We believe the IT industry will be shaped by breakthrough partnerships that unlock new productivity for customers beyond the boundaries of traditional platforms and applications. SAP and Microsoft are working together to create an end-user experience built on unprecedented insight, convenience and agility,” he added.

“The certification of Microsoft Azure infrastructure services for SAP HANA along with the new integration between Microsoft Office 365 and cloud solutions from SAP are emblematic of this major paradigm shift for the enterprise,” said McDermott.
He said his company’s multibillion investment into innovation aimed at making its software HANA re-invent global businesses.
Speaking at the same event, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, said the partnership would assist organizations using the SAP cloud to drive innovation, agility and enable new ways to work.

“At Microsoft, we are focused on empowering organizations to advance their digital transformations. Together with SAP, we are bringing new levels of integrations between our products that provide businesses with enhanced collaboration tools, new insights from data and a hyper-scale cloud to grow and seize new opportunities ahead,” said Nadella.

Both SAP and Microsoft agreed working together would see the certified SAP flagship innovation -SAP HANA run development test and production workloads on Microsoft Azure.